The “poster boy” of the January 6 riots was just sentenced to five years in prison.
When a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, Doug Jensen, 43, was directly involved in one of the day’s most dramatic moments. Jensen, the tenth person to breach the Capitol Building led a crowd chasing U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman officer up a set of stairs and into a corridor just outside the Senate chambers. The man, clad in a distinctive black QAnon hoodie, screamed at the officer to arrest then Vice President Mike Pence and “do their jobs.”
Videos by VICE
Images of the stand-off and Jensen at the front of the crowd quickly made him one of the faces of the riot, alongside folks like the QAnon Shaman.
The Iowa man was forced to leave the Capitol building after the initial break-in but, undeterred, reentered the grounds and had to be forcibly removed a second time. Unbeknownst to most, he was armed with a knife during his time on the hill.
Authorities conducted a massive effort to identify and arrest those who breached the Capitol grounds that day and have charged almost 1,000 people so far. Jensen, being one of the most prominent faces to emerge from that day, was quickly identified and arrested two days after the riots.
Jenson was found guilty of assaulting a law enforcement officer, obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building with a dangerous weapon, and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon in September.
According to USA Today, before the sentence was announced Jensen said “I can’t change my past, I can just look to the future.”
In a 72-page sentencing memo, prosecutors described a man with a history of domestic violence, emboldened by the size of the mob told his fellow rioters, in reference to Officer Goodman, “he’s one person, we’re thousands.”
“Jensen was not only determined to arrest Vice President Pence on January 6, but he also wanted the Capitol Police to ‘surrender the building’ to the rioters,” it reads. “In other words, his goal was not just to disrupt the certification of the electoral college vote, but to actually occupy the building. He was not there to protest; he was there to wrest control.”
Following the events in D.C., Jensen celebrated his newfound fame calling himself a “hero” and “repeatedly expressed pride for having achieved his goal of becoming the ‘poster boy for January 6.” Prosecutors asked for a five-year sentence whereas his attorneys asked for two.
Jensen partially blamed his actions on the QAnon conspiracy–which purports Donald Trump is waging a secretive war against a pedophilic cabal that runs the world behind the scenes. In his trial, his attorney even dubbed him a “walking advertisement for QAnon.” Jensen himself said that he had been deceived by lies leading up to the riots and regretted what he did on that fateful day.
Jensen also received 36 months of supervised release and $2,000 of restitution.
